Locked Doors and Broken Mirrors
by F. Flotsam
Summary: Dreams can be dangerous things. Hi all! Just wanted to say, I'll be updating this desiccated relic of literary drivel in the coming weeks, with new chapters and a slight overhaul of the first. Hope the change wont disappoint - my writing style has changed rather drastically in the years intervening between my original posting and today. Sincerely, F. Flotsam.
1. Chapter 1

Locked Doors and Broken Mirrors

It was the same deal every summer. I'd be doing what every normal person does after an entire season of algebra and English classes, lying back and reading a book with _real_ educational value. Namely, Zombies vs. Unicorns by Holly Black.

Then all of a sudden, just out of the blue, dad gets it into his head that we should actually _do _something during vacation. Not only do something, but something _constructive. As a family. _Because of course he can't just let us enjoy our selves as individuals, oh no, we have to do things that make us miserable en masse. This year, it was visiting obscure relatives in foreign countries. Not interesting, romantic countries thought. Not France, or Romania, or Italy. We had to go to places like Iceland, and Czechoslovakia, and Germany. Cold, dark, depressing places where all the men have frighteningly large beards and all the women knit socks whilst singing creepy low-pitched folk songs. At least, I thought they were socks.

This part of our whirlwind world tour finds us staying with the long lost German branch of the Thrush family, the Drossels. Our arrival came as something of a shock to them, except for the patriarch of their family, the disturbingly jovial Uncle Wolfgang. It seems that he and dad had been corresponding over the Internet ever since dad had begun to plan our "foreign family exchange". Soon enough the rest of the FrondSpiels had adopted their leader's unsettlingly cheerful demeanor, and welcomed us in with open arms. Which is how I ended up lost in one of the "world's top five most creeptastic castles."

You see, as soon as they fell in line with Uncle Wolfgang's "familial bonding" attitude, the Drossels felt the need to express their new found affection by showing us the sights. _ALL _the sights. First, it was the lakes. Then, it was the historic battlefields. After that, the breweries. And then, having saved the best for last, we were taken through the most gothic, gruesome, unsafe and unsanitary castles within traveling distance. Today it was the ancestral home of the Spiegel Wachters, the moldiest and most barbaric of all the places we had visited so far. The gate alone had enough gargoyles to start a mythical zoo, and the interior decorating ran towards ancient oil paintings, an excess of stuffed animal heads, and all the vicious looking medieval weapons that they were probably killed with.

It was raining that day, as it had been for most of our travels in the far reaches of Europe. When we finally reached the castle, we had to jump out of the car and tumble into the entry hall at a dead run, which caused cousin Fritz to step my foot, which caused me to lose my balance and trip everyone else. Long story short, we all ended up in a cold wet pile on the hard stone floor, with only a particularly indignant looking stuffed owl to bear witness. I counted my blessings that I had been at the outer edge of the family throng, as most of my cousins were either extremely bony, frighteningly muscular, or uncommonly fat. After we managed to untangle ourselves and revive mom, who, unlike me, had unfortunately been at the center of the group and thus under the greatest number of disproportionate relatives, Helga appeared. Apparently, all the ruckus we'd made had set her tour guide senses tingling, and summoned her to our side.

She was Barbie doll blond, with her hair done up in honest to god _pigtails._ She wore a uniform of khaki pants, short sleeved blue polo shirt, neon green nametag, and a cheery smile so painfully bright I was sure she could peel paint with it. One glance at Cousin Fritz was enough to tell me that he found her "happy, helpful, and hoping to serve" grin enchanting instead of blinding. He nearly tripped us all over again in his rush to get to his newfound beloved's side, and upon reaching her, he practically got down on one knee and begged her to us the honor of being our tour guide in our time of need. He seemed to have conveniently forgotten that he had already been to the castle several times, and had planned to show us around it free of charge.

Helga, it seemed, was completely oblivious to Fritz' ulterior motives, and took his request quite seriously. And so began the most excruciatingly long, intensive, and _thorough_ tour any hapless castle crazed foreigner could ask for. She showed us the dungeons, she showed us the courtyards, she showed us every single bedroom, bathroom, closet and cupboard, all while chirping in a ultra chipper sing song every significant event that occurred in them since the dawn of time. I tuned out her voice, my family's questions, everything. As she took us through a hallway that went past entrance to the third floor of the western wing, my attention wandered into a hazy, half-asleep state. I registered, at the back of my mind, that her tone changed here, lost some of its brightness, grew wary. Fritz, in a moment of clarity, commented that he had never seen this part of the castle. For once, his ignorance seemed genuine instead of created for Helga's benefit. She simply said that it was kept closed, to protect some "delicate heirlooms" stored inside. Her abrupt change, from information overloading to taciturn single sentences, shook me from my stupor. It also sparked my interest. What 'delicate heirlooms" required such protection, or an entire wing of a castle to house them?

I slowed my steps, edged my way to the outside of the group, and then let them walk away. When I couldn't hear even the echoes of their voices any longer, I raced back to the door to the west wing. To my surprise, it was unlocked. However, it weighed what seemed to be six tons, and groaned like a dying animal when I tried to pry it open. Finally, the thing opened enough to allow a skinny, flexible, and determined teenaged girl to get through.


	2. Chapter 2

She emerged into the ghost of a room.

Rather than the calamitous and elbow traumatizing prat fall that she'd been anticipating, she slipped, then flowed across what at first seemed like snow, or lace, or mold, or eider down, or….something.

Barring serious fungal infestation, strange hobbies, bad weather proofing, or murder most fowl

(puns were a hereditary affliction of her family, and _it was all dad's fault so help her god)_

she quickly deduced that it was accumulation of dust on a scale beyond anything she had encountered before, lit by a wall of windows of bubbled, diamond paned glass.

Before summer vacation, but after, after the.

Just _after._ In that limbo of being excused from school but refusing to stay home, she remembered.

She would walk to class. She would sit at the back. She would listen, and hear nothing. The students would whisper in time with the tinnitus in her ears, and the teachers would speak with their silences, and she would answer with hers. She remembered a Tuesday. She remembered Pompeii.

From the end of the shining trail she had left in the dust on the floor, she looked on. Every surface was layered in grey, and knowing, _knowing,_ what it was, she still thought _ash. _It wasthe furniture, she realized. The tables and footstools, the cabinets and chairs draped in their funeral shrouds – above and atop them, the marble busts and taxidermy animal heads in canvas bridal veils, dust tarps turned translucent with time and sun, lacy patterns of rodent damage at the edges, aged with disturbing grace.

Siouxsie and the banshees started to play on a loop in the back of her head, an apt accompaniment to the miserly slice of grey matter her genes had allotted to propriety that was quietly screaming to the tune of 'they'll burn my passport and sell me to the sock-women to harvest my hair as a wool alternative.'

The remaining portion of the miserable walnut she used in place of a brain was quite content to wonder at the strange hall, occupied by the living dead – for the furniture, while technically inanimate, struck her as oddly alive. She stood, and stared, and knew she had see this misadventure to its end.

The hall was quite large, wide enough across that she could stand shoulder to shoulder with four of herself and still not reach the edge, and as long as six school buses set bumper to bumper with room to spare for an illegal U-turn at each end.

The grey light that managed to filter through both the rain and the thick glass cast everything in a wavering haze, rippling but constant. It made her feel a slow rolling ache in her stomach, entirely psychosomatic. The pain was nostalgia and fear and love and shame, because the light was the same as being underwater.

She dealt with this pain and its source through her time honoured method, honed through years of training and diligent study. She ignored it.


End file.
